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This document includes the Teacher's Guide and Student Activity Sheet for Learning Experience 11: What Do Crickets Eat? What Do Isopods Eat?.

This wiki version can be edited or built up with other materials on the same topic by members of the Curriki community. The entire Terrariums and Vivariums collection is also available as downloadable PDFs.

This resource received a 3* rating because it is part of Terrariums and Vivariums, which received a rating of 3-Exemplary in the Curriki Review System and which you can see here: http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_cabocesmst/TerrariumsandVivariums

Read the background information in the Terrariums and
Vivariums Teacher’s Manual. (Please see PDF)

Basic Skills
Development:

Listening

Speaking

Observing

Record keeping

Writing

Evaluation Strategy:

Students have isolated crickets with food and have observed
whether any specific samples have been eaten. Students will have determined
what foods isopods eat.

Vocabulary:

population

herbivore

omnivore

carnivore

Objective:
Students will learn about the food preferences of crickets and isopods.

How can we find out
what crickets prefer to eat? What do isopods eat?

Discuss ways that students can set up an experiment to find
out what crickets eat. They may also be able to find out how much they eat.

Have students set up individual cricket houses according to
directions on their Student Activity Sheet. After a few days, observe and
discuss the results.

Discussion Question:

What foods would you feed a population of crickets?

Can you find out how much the crickets ate by counting all
of the samples eaten by all of the test crickets?

Students can now set up their own test to find out what
isopods eat. They may make their own chart like the one on the Student Activity
Sheet for Learning Experience 11. They may experiment with different materials,
but it will help to guide them in the direction of decaying plant leaves,
stems, and roots. Isopods also eat bran, old wood chips, and other plant
materials.

STUDENT ACTIVITY
SHEET for Learning Experience 11

Name___________________

WHAT DO CRICKETS EAT? WHAT DO ISOPODS EAT?

What do crickets eat?

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

Inside a clear plastic tumbler, press a tape roll or a
rolled up gummed label. Then press several foods onto the sticky surface. You
might try several seeds, leaves, stems, a dead spider or fly, or whatever you
think a cricket will eat. Moisten a cotton ball and put it in the bottom of the
tumbler.

Put in two crickets and attach the lid. Store them out of
direct sunlight in a temperature between 65? and 100?F.

Fill in the first two columns of the chart below as soon as
you finish setting up the experiment.

Kind of Food Provided

How much was provided?

Was the food eaten?

Was the food plant or animal?

Observe your crickets for the next couple of days. Have they
eaten any of the materials you provided? How much have they eaten?
_____________________

After five days, what conclusions can you make? Did your
crickets eat the same amount each day? _________________________________________________